Many modern internal combustion engine systems exploit the desirable combustion and emission properties attendant to high fuel injection pressures. It is well known that such high pressure fuel injection, often on the order of 200 megapascals (MPa) or more, promotes atomization and vaporization of injected fuel, having various desirable results. One strategy developed decades ago to enable the supplying of highly pressurized fuel to multiple fuel injectors in a multi-cylinder engine is known as a common rail. A common rail is essentially a long tube which serves to store a volume of highly pressurized fuel received from a fuel pump, and configured to feed the highly pressurized fuel simultaneously to a group of fuel injectors on the engine as needed. While common rail designs have worked very well over the years, and are still in widespread use, they present certain manufacturing, packaging, and pressure containment and sealing challenges. Some of these issues have been exacerbated by the drive towards ever higher fuel pressures.
Strategies have been proposed where a dedicated pressure accumulator is provided in direct connection with each fuel injector in an engine system. The dedicated pressure accumulators store a volume of fuel sufficient to enable stable provision of the fuel at design pressures for injection by the fuel injectors, and can in at least certain instances be easier to package and less expensive to manufacture and maintain than certain common rail designs. United States Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0315117 A1 to Gerstner et al. is directed to one such dedicated accumulator strategy. In Gerstner et al., a plurality of pressure accumulators are provided, each connected with one fuel injector, and a plurality of flow limiters are positioned fluidly between the pressure accumulators and the corresponding fuel injectors, apparently to limit fuel leakage during catastrophic failure and/or to dampen pressure oscillations caused by operation of the fuel injectors. While Gerstner et al. provides a viable strategy, there is always room for improvement.